When you’re managing communications for a large government organisation, you learn a lot about how to walk the tightrope of accuracy and clarity.
Because the stakes are high and your audience is… everyone. The general public, businesses, other government organisations, other departments within your organisation… everyone.
You’re also dealing with important information that MUST be accurate because it affects lives and livelihoods (and there are often legal implications).
Unfortunately, that last part tends to lead to very technical communications as organisations prefer to err on the side of safety. However, when your audience is the general public, overly technical comms is pretty much the same as no comms at all. Because they won’t understand it.
That’s the conundrum I faced when I took a short-term contract at T&T’s Ministry of Finance way back in 2019.
A HUGE ministerial undertaking
Seventeen divisions in one key ministry serving the entire nation. And I was leading a communications unit of three.
To say I was intimidated would be a HUGE understatement. So, I did what I always do: I trusted the judgement of those who selected me and I broke the challenge down into manageable pieces.
There were a number of pieces (a comms plan, event management, a website update, etc.), but my favourite one—and the one most relevant to my lengthy preamble—was tackling the Ministry’s public-facing comms, particularly in the digital arena.
Between regular press releases and weekly ministerial appearances in Parliament (and elsewhere), there was all kinds of information that needed to go out, but it was often way too dense for effective digital distribution.
Breaking it down for the people
So I created a few simple templates (for parliamentary statements, ministerial statements, and fiscal policies) and we got to work simplifying those complex communications into clear and concise graphics that would be easily understood by the general public.
I haven’t checked in for a while, but I do know that the unit kept using them for years after my engagement ended.
There were absolutely bigger deliverables while I was there (executing a Spotlight on Budget event attended by business leaders and the Prime Minister was definitely a high point), but this one remains my fave.
It’s a clear demonstration of my belief that complex institutions don’t need louder communications to reach their audiences, they need clearer ones.
